Playing Hopscotch Backwards
by now untouched
Summary: ...your nerves still tingle with her absence and that's why you're so unsettled when you come to your senses and realize she's slipped right through you. CarlyxSam friendship with a chance of eventual Cam. ON INDEFINITE HIATUS.
1. Chapter 1

"My parents are getting divorced."

She plops the news down on you in the middle of lunch, much like the way the servers here plop baked beans on the lunch trays. One second you're minding your own business, and the next you get unexpectedly splattered with brown goop and are told to keep moving along even though now you're all sticky and an apology really would be nice.

You look up from your coincidentally slop-speckled hands just as Sam dumps her backpack next to her chair and sits. She unloads her lunch pack without a word - a roast beef and cheese sandwich, a package of Fat Cakes and some carrot sticks for show so she can pretend that she follows the Food Guide Pyramid to some extent. She doesn't acknowledge that she said anything, and you wonder if you heard her wrong, but then you eye her normal-sized-for-anyone-else-but-her meal portion and know that there would have to be a good reason for it. You imagine that your eyes have gotten several sizes bigger as the words have started to sink in and suck the air out of your chest.

"Oh, my gosh. Sam, that's...that's awful." You try reaching across the table to take one of her hands, but she's busied them by pretending to have trouble opening her sandwich baggie and mumbling about a lack of juice box. Sam's a keep-moving-along kind of girl, but that doesn't mean you can't recognize the hurt when you see it. She's slumped and quiet and not attacking her lunch like she hasn't eaten for several hours, and that's scary because it's just so un-Sam-like and you're not sure what to do.

"Is it, Shay?" she asks you when you're still stretching your arms as far as they'll go, steel blue eyes burning a hole in that place below your breastbone where it feels like you swallowed a block of lead. You get a chill just holding her gaze because that's the first time today she's made eye contact with you and she's brimming with hatred. "It makes an awful lot of sense to me. Lorene kind of has an alcohol problem, and Stanley really isn't around. Neither one of them is really all that nice to come home to - if they _are _home." She picks little crumbs of the edge of her sandwich and lets you taste the bitterness of the venom she's dripping with on the roof of your mouth. Your extended fingers ball into a fist which you allow to fall into your lap.

It's horrible that she uses her parent's first names instead of 'mom' and 'dad', but what stings is how right she is. On the few occasions you've visited Sam's house, the television set in the living room was always blaring as if it was angry that nobody was on the lumpy sofa to watch it. Lorene's bedroom door was shut and locked at times, cracked open in others. It depended, Sam had told you, on if she was indulging or not. Closed door, green light, go in without fuss and she wouldn't be out for a while. Open door, red light, oh god, she's up, could she stay over at your place tonight?

It wasn't as simple for Stanley. You aren't sure what he does exactly, but you do know he has to drive a while to get to work and that whatever his occupation is involved cubicles and paperwork and long hours with little pay. You recall that he was more of a shadow that appeared in later hours, coming home and digging in the fridge for ham and pickles after depositing his meager wages in the bank. He would eat at the table without sparing his daughter a passing glance, though she'd come over to stick a fork in the pickle jar every now and then. You swore after seeing them coexist like that only once that he wasn't anywhere close enough to being Sam's father, but then he saw you, and you saw that they shared the same icy eyes and odd eating habits. Just thinking about it makes you shiver sometimes.

"Still," you offer, and then find that there's not much you can say other than some clichés about life that you know Sam just wouldn't appreciate, and you're fighting to keep pity from radiating out of your pores because she'd like that even less. You take a long swig from your water bottle to buy time and train your eyes not to leave her face. You're panting by the time you're stomach starts to relent, and when you put the cap back on, the bottle is so much lighter than before. Frantic downing of liquids is one of your strange coping mechanisms, and Sam knows that, but she doesn't comment about how you're drowning your internal organs. She lets you catch your breath and raises her sandwich halfway to her mouth before she just starts staring at it, but it's not a lost-in-the-glory-of-food stare as much as it's a here-in-body-but-not-in-mind stare.

"Sam," you say, and she blinks once, gives the sandwich a once-over and puts it down. Then, you remember that you're supposed to say something, but you aren't sure what. You manage to find something. "Aren't you going to eat?"

"Nah." Her gaze flickers over what she brought with a disinterest you've only seen during class lectures. "Being told that your life is going to be turned upside-down, inside-out and backwards over breakfast is enough to kill an appetite for a while."

You're now too appalled to find pity anywhere. "You _just_ found out? Like, this morning before school?"

_Well, duh_, part of you retorts. _She would have told you by now had it happened sooner._

"Yep," she affirms. "I was just sittin' there having some bacon, and _bam_, Lorene's like, 'We're getting a divorce'. I really should have known - I mean, Stanley hasn't slept at the house in weeks, and when he did, there was always complaints about the bills and arguments, and avoiding each other, and bottle-throwing -"

"_Bottle-throwing_?" you cut in with a slightly hysterical edge to your voice. You knew Sam's home life had much to be desired, but there hasn't been any mention of _bottle-throwing_ before, so you're more than a little concerned now. Your thoughts begin to circle as you search your memory of any weird bruising or cuts that she may have acquired and blamed on something else, and then you decide that telling someone is probably more important before she says, "Well, yeah, but that was only one time. I needed to pee, and they were arguing right in front of the bathroom door. Screaming over them never works, and there just so happened to be a bottle at my feet." She shrugs. "Nothing too bad, since Stanley has good reflexes and ducked. The bottle didn't even dent the door when it broke."

You have to retrain yourself to breathe after she says that. Air in, air out. Inhale, exhale. When you trust your lungs to function thoughtlessly again, your first response is just to gape at her, but after about four years of friendship you've learned to repress that kind of reaction. Instead, you clarify what you're thinking in a slowly-spoken question with careful emphasis on important words. "You _threw_ a _beer bottle_ at your _dad_?"

"Well, not at him, specifically," she says in a tone that you suspect she thinks will make the act less punishable. "I was going for the door frame, but I couldn't aim properly with my bladder on the verge of explosion. So, yeah, that's kind of how it ended up."

Your school has a hands-off policy for a reason, and if Sam were more herself, you might just consider violating it via a very hard pinch or a punch in the arm. "Sam, that's awful!"

"I thought you said the divorce part was awful."

Oh. Right. "That too." You feel like you crushed her all over again because she's deflated even more after she said 'divorce' the second time. At least the delinquency was some degree of normal. The two of you exchange glances before turning attention to your food. You're a little apprehensive about the majority of what's on your plate - who knew what went into the hotdogs here, and you despise the baked beans even though it's the lunch ladies' fault for just dropping them on your plate and making a mess of you. Your apple looks okay, but a few bites into it and it's so sour your tongue stings. It's your own fault for deciding that you could afford to hit the snooze button on your alarm clock multiple times this morning, leaving you running too late to make a lunch.

Sam pushes her sandwich your way along with her Fat Cakes and carrot sticks, and you search her face for...what? A sign that she was kidding? Samantha Puckett didn't kid when it came to food. When you take her carrot sticks that she wouldn't eat anyway, she doesn't even appear to care. You chew and swallow, chew and swallow, because interacting with her like this is becoming an out-of-body experience and you don't know what else to do. And then the carrot sticks are gone, and she's still not going for any food even though you ate them at a ridiculously slow pace so she'd maybe be tempted.

You sigh and tell her, "You have to eat something."

In as close to what could be considered typical Sam at the moment, she takes a small bite of her roast beef. "There. I ate."

"You know what I mean. Come on - at least have half of your sandwich. Or the Fat Cakes." You're pleading with her now because the transition between getting angry at her for eating absolutely everything edible in the refrigerator and trying to convince her to finish a fraction of her lunch goes against all instinct for both of you.

And the world decides to keep turning even though neither of you are ready to move on. When the bell rings, chaos erupts as chairs scrape and droning voices grow louder, and you rise from your seat to avoid injury from passerby that might slam your gut into the table. Sam follows, though for a second you think she plans to remain sitting for the rest of the day, or an eternity or so. She pushes in her chair, squishes her sandwich until it's just a ball of bread and meat, and throws it in the paper bag.

"Roast beef is your second-favorite deli meat. Y'know, besides ham," you tell her as if she doesn't already know, and you put the bag on your tray. She slips her Fat Cakes into her pocket and shrugs, the former action being the most reassuring thing she's done today. You knew she'd never waste her precious processed pastries. Soon enough, it's just the two of you in the cafeteria, and the disconnection between you two is so palpable that you're afraid you'll disappear into all the empty space. Maybe you never actually existed. Maybe this is some kind of sick, really elaborate dream.

"Are you okay?" you ask her, and you sound so loud when you say it without hundreds of other voices to drown you out but this is the one thing you should have been asking from the start. You see the weight of your inquiry press down on her, and perhaps it's too vague or too loaded to answer. You draw in a breath past your lips like it'll pull the question back on the tip of your tongue while a storm brews behind her eyes. Sam hasn't ever been _easy_ to read, but right now she seems so beyond her twelve-and-a-half years of age, and you get the sense that she knows so much more than you will ever understand.

"I'm just fine," she replies in a contradictory voice. "Just fine." Then she turns around and starts to leave just as your fingers come together. You don't think she does it on purpose because you were just barely brushing fingertips, but your nerves still tingle with her absence and that's why you're so unsettled when you come to your senses and realize she's slipped right through you.

* * *

Your last class of the day is English, and after a period of deciphering algebraic equations, it's nice to be working with a language that doesn't combine numbers and letters. When you walk into the classroom and find a stout, middle-aged man by the door instead of Mrs. Briggs, you swear that a patch of light breaks through the dismal Seattle clouds outside the window. You're supposed to be the good student who doesn't keep tabs on these coincidences, but sometimes it just happens, and your mood lifts a little. Good student or no, you can't look at Mrs. Briggs anymore without getting an image of her trying to bust a move on Randy Jackson after you accidentally caught her staring at a photograph of him with a look in her gaze that said she wanted to do some very x-rated things to him, which is quite disgusting with her being the dinosaur that she is.

You _did_ have to agree with her a few days ago, though, when she decided to combat her much-too-chatty students with an unexpected seating arrangement that you'd forgotten about until now. Miraculously - and guilt plagues you from the moment you see her - you also managed to forget about Sam's situation in the midst of parabolas and coordinate planes.

You can't miss her stare because she's in the very front row next to the door, and those eyes are like the opposite poles to yours. You have to look at her. It cannot be avoided. She must get the same idea because you see her turn her head at the same time you do, and the polarity keeps you momentarily grounded. She glances down at her desk, and since there's no longer anything holding you there and you don't want people to look at you funny, you resume towards your seat. It's on the other side of the room, one row back from the front so Sam would have to turn noticeably in her seat if she wanted to even see you. Mrs. Briggs has some very intelligent yet irksome tactics.

Gibby sits in front of you now, and when you sidestep past him to get to your desk, he flashes you his boyish smile. Your lips twitch in a wavering imitation because you're not focused on anyone or anything but Sam anymore, but he doesn't seem to notice, spinning in his chair so he can talk to you.

"I heard," he says in a low voice that isn't all that low because Gibby's always been too dynamic for whispers, "that Mrs. Briggs is going to be out for a while because she's getting botox done on her face for her wrinkles and plastic surgery on her boobs to make them smaller."

Being the supposedly good student that you are, the first thing you think is that it's another absurd rumor, but then you note the truth in it because that woman's biological clock _is_ kind of screwed and it's not like you haven't made cracks about her boobs before because really, how can you help it when those things are practically dangerous weapons?

It's enough to make you almost laugh. Almost. When you ask him where he heard that, Gibby proceeds to list Reuben, Wendy and the entire boys and girls basketball teams before he nails down a possible culprit. By the time he gets there you've figured it out for yourself, but that doesn't make his memory any less impressive.

"Sam didn't tell you?" He's rightfully taken aback, but then all guys expect girls to have ESP with their best friends. You shrug. "We were discussing other important things, I guess. It never came up." There's no guessing involved, but there's no lying involved either, so he buys it. You and your classmates then listen to the soft-spoken substitute teacher at the front of the room, or try to, anyway. He's got this weird way of slurring his words together that makes you suspect that he either has a speech impediment or that he'd fail a sobriety test. You hope it's the first one, but when he lifts his arm to scrawl your assignments on the white board, the sweat stains underneath advise you to have less faith. Weren't schools supposed to screen these people before letting them into classrooms?

His handwriting slopes downhill so badly that he has to erase his handiwork and try again. It's just busy work - reading in anthologies and responding to questions, some vocabulary, all things that aren't worth the groans from your peers.

But once you find your notebook and get into your anthology, you find that you're not enjoying literature from the Romantic Era on the whole today. Trying to wrap your mind around the styles of these authors is spinning your brain into cotton candy and making the text blur on the page. You aren't in the mood for Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickenson's punctuation just makes no sense at all, and someone needs to teach Nathaniel Hawthorne what a run-on sentence is. You nod with certainty as you close your book, and your head finds it's way onto your desk.

There's a vibration against your thigh that makes you jump, and you shove your hand in your pocket and switch it on silent in one motion. Only when you're sure that just a few surrounding students noticed do you pull out your cell phone and open up the text message, typed in horrendous chat speak that has no place in English class.

'U dnt look so good' it reads, and you look over at the sender just long enough to acknowledge her before you hide your hands under your desk to reply.

'Headache. Cant focus.'

'Thats not like u'. Sam's expression across the room feigns shock. You notice that she's completely turned around in her chair and think that she _would _be the first one to take advantage of a substitute as long as they neglected their duty.

'Oh, ha, ha. Dont get yourself in trouble.' You hit send and curse the fact that there's no way to add an apostrophe when you text.

'Ur gonna get in trouble if u dnt do ur work shay. y dnt u & me skip?"

This makes you raise an eyebrow. 'How do we skip in the middle of class?'

'ask sweaty ovr there if u can go 2 the nurse. leave the rest 2 me.'

The nickname, despite the juvenile aspect, would make you smile if it didn't ring so truly. Just the thought of having to stand anywhere near him is enough to make your stomach roll, which may have been Sam's point in having you go up there but that doesn't mean you want to.

As always, when you make your way up to Mrs. Briggs desk, your footsteps become so many decibels louder than they should be because you've got this phobia of being up in front of the class even when you aren't public speaking. The sweaty substitute has a book in his hands, but his head is lolled too far forward for him to be reading the pages unless he can do so through closed eyes. "U-Um," you start, and he jolts, bewildered until his surroundings start to make sense again and then he sees you.

"M-May I go t-to the nurse?" you ask too quickly because the sensation of having everyone's eyes on you even when they don't isn't pleasant. Then, you add, "I have a headache," and the shakiness in your voice just might be what makes him regard you with pity as he searches for a blank pass. "Name?"

"Carly Shay." You swallow hard and hope you aren't blushing because you do that when you're afraid of being caught in a lie or partial truth.

There's cool fingers on your forehead just as you're taking the signed slip, and that's when you know Sam's snuck behind you invisible-ninja style. "You're warm, cupcake," she murmurs into your hair, and then you're _certain_ that you're blushing.

"May I go with her?" Sam asks in her perfect blue-eyed blonde voice that so many teachers mistake as innocent. "She gets migraines sometimes, and I want to be there in case she feels faint." You press into her automatically, your head on her chest just enough for her to notice, and instead of moving away all too fast like at lunch, she twirls a lock of your hair around her index finger. She has a strange fetish with your hair.

The two of you clutch your hall passes: Sam between two fingers and you with yours balled in your fist because you're still amazed you pulled it off. Sam shuts the door to your classroom like your classmates wouldn't appreciate a little outside interruption, and you _breathe_ for the first time in several minutes. "Wow."

"All in a days' work." She beams cockily at you, and your knees are still trembling but a bit less so now. "So, where to? I think Wendy has a cooking class this period, and she might be able to sneak us some food if we're lucky."

Even though this is _Sam_ and you should really know better, you're kind of baffled. "Aren't you supposed to take me to the nurse?"

"I'm _supposed_ to, but that takes the fun out of skipping," she explains, and you suspect that had anybody else but you asked that she would have enjoyed making them appear like an imbecile in some way. Good thing you're such an amateur at this. She studies you for a second. "If you really _are_ sick, we can drop by the nurse if you want."

"No, no, I'm fine," you confirm with a shake of your head. "I mean, I have a headache, but it's nothing to worry about."

"Well...do you want to just wander the halls, then?" She's not quite convinced because, let's face it, headaches make you miserable, but getting out of that stuffy classroom made an improvement.

"Okay." You let her lead because when it comes to you and Sam, you fit better walking in her shadow. At least as far as irresponsibility goes.

You let her talk, too because it seems like she's come out of whatever funk she was in before, and conversation flows just like it should except there's an elephant in the room that you have to make an effort to step around sometimes, like when she mentions her mom's new bikini.

"What's her obsession with those?" It's a question that's sat in the back of your mind for a long time but you weren't sure you wanted to hear the answer. You still aren't.

"She likes the freedom of them," Sam responds, and that plants a myriad of thoughts in your mind that you didn't need, but, hey, you asked for it. "Plus," she adds, "they make her feel beautiful, and it's not like Stanley's ever done that."

You didn't ask for that, though, and you have to swallow the lump in your throat in order to let the small "Oh," out. And as you again you find yourself struggling for consolation, Sam offers you a Fat Cake out of the package in her pocket which you decline and she devours in point-seven seconds approximately. She gets to talking about the Mrs. Briggs rumor (which she did unsurprisingly start), and you laugh accordingly when really you're just coming to the realization that Sam's always hinted at tension between her parents and it's taken a formal announcement for you to notice.

But you're consoled by the fact that the world hasn't ended by letting bad news resurface after just a short expanse of time, and that means something. You've worried about Sam before, but only when she plotted illegal things or threatened a random stranger for their lunch money. She's gone through tough times before, and now that you think about it, there's a lot more pros than cons in this situation.

The bell rings, and subsequently kids start pouring out of classrooms like a flash flood because it's Friday, after all, and who wouldn't? You aren't the pushing and shoving type, so when a door nearly collides with you, instinct tells you to hug the wall until there's less risk of being trampled.

But that's why you have Sam, who pulls you close and whispers, "Hang on to me and try not to look so helpless. We'll be out of here in no time."

Helplessness goes against your feminist beliefs in every way and you're about to protest, but Sam's got an arm snaked around your side in such a way that forces you to walk with her, close to her, and as she picks up the pace you really are as helpless as it gets.

"Outta my way, people, or I'll pulverize you and have you cooked into mystery meat for Monday's lunch!" As empty as Sam's threats usually are, they're also effective in clearing the hallway. You see this not only in Sam's unlucky victims, but even some kids you're sure you've never met before, and Sam doesn't know many people you aren't familiar with.

In record time you've reached the double doors, and the autumn air is crisp when you get outside. You notice that Sam doesn't have a jacket and is in short sleeves. "Aren't you cold?"

"Nah. It's a nice day." And it is, but you wouldn't say it was that nice, and it's kind of freaky the way she doesn't even have goosebumps on her arms.

"You're insane."

"I know." She's proud, too. "What do you say we blow this popsicle stand?"

"Sounds good to me." And then you remember: "My stuff! We never went back for it after we supposedly went to the nurse's office!"

She laughs at you, and it's not like you'd expect any concern over pens and notebooks but you would have appreciated her pretending school was important for once. "I love how you just had to say the 'supposedly' part."

"Sam, I don't want weirdoes going through my backpack or anything."

"Well, do you have anything any weirdoes would want?" She raises an eyebrow in suggestion, and you stare at her. "No...I don't do those things."

"Right." She draws the word out and winks. "Look, Carls, your backpack is right in Mrs. Briggs' room, and I'm sure she'll keep it around or put it in Lost and Found or something. No one's going to go after your precious gel pens, either."

You splutter because she's kind of right in guessing you'd be worried about them. "They're nice pens! But beyond that, I don't want my homework getting lost."

"Well, too bad. You're keeping me warm and therefore I'm not allowing you to leave me," Sam informs you stubbornly. "And I'm walking to your apartment, so either you cooperate or chew off your own arm."

You realize all this time you're still wound up in her and that those _are _your only choices. So because you value each of your arms, you start moving. "I thought you weren't cold."

"Not with you here," she says and grins. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes sparkling as you roll your own. You're annoyed by the sheer fact that you can't even be annoyed with her right now because she's so _Sam_.

But Sam is exactly what you want, and if you have you redo your homework in study hall on Monday, then so be it.


	2. Chapter 2

The two have you have settled into this comfortable not-quite-silence by the time your apartment building is in sight. There's this rhythm to the world that you've been told exists if you know how to listen, and maybe you did absorb some of the key points in Ralph Waldo Emerson's nature essays during English because you're ears have been unknowingly trained at some point. Twigs and leaves snap and splinter under your sneaker-clad feet and with the scuffle of rubber soles on the asphalt accompanied by the wind's chilly whispers across your face, there's this harmony and melody going, and you think this is the only song where it doesn't matter which is which.

"The world is a song." Your mind doesn't always have a censor when you're philosophical because when that happens, as far as you're concerned you're the next Confucius and people should know what you're thinking. Sam's learned not to laugh when you blurt these things out, and she doesn't now. That's a big part of why you're good friends - you know she's got no clue what you mean but she still puts on a pensive face and pretends.

"I guess it is," she agrees. "There's a song out there for everything these days isn't there?"

"That's not what I mean. Listen."

She stops and she does as you tell her, which should be an honor because Samantha Puckett isn't known for taking orders, but instead it just makes you frustrated. "You can't just _stop_. The song is in the way we walk, the way our sneakers sound. It makes a song."

She purses her lips. "So like...it's in the way I move my feet?"

"Yeah." You nod and try to contain yourself because _she understands_ and usually she just takes things too literally when you start applying metaphors to things.

But then she starts stepping in this _scuff-scuff-stomp_ pattern, and it takes you a second to recognize what she's doing but when you do your hopes are dashed. "It's not a song like We Will Rock You, Sam!"

Her chuckles are muffled under the roar of a passing truck, and you moan into your hands. "There must have been some strange things in that water you've been drinking, chica," she muses.

You want to be mad at her, you really do, but by the time you've reached your apartment building and get up the stairs the weird enlightened feeling is gone and your footsteps sound like just footsteps, so maybe she's right.

"I'm hungry," Sam says, pulling on your arm which just so happens to be connected the hand that you're trying to unlock the door with, and the key slips from your fingers. "Oops."

"Yeah, 'oops'." you chastise with a hardness in your voice that she's grown immune to, and being the good friend that she is, she humors you and tries to look sorry. You know better though - you can see the corners of her mouth twitching even as she bites her lips to keep them from curling upwards.

"Carly!" From behind you, a second voice calls your name, and you almost drop the key again as you straighten up.

He's right there behind you, and your bubble of personal space seems to get significantly smaller when you turn around. It's not like he's practically on top of you or anything because there's still a good few feet of distance between you, but he's just so enthusiastic and his smile is so broad it's painful to look at.

"Hey, Freddie," you greet.

Freddie Benson's apartment is just across the hall from the one you share with Spencer, and he seems to pop up whenever you're around. At first, you thought it was just coincidence, as the two of you had been acquainted even before Spencer took on your guardianship and there's nothing wrong with coming by to say hello. But it's been about six months now since you moved in, and if anything Freddie's gotten more and more clingy around you. He's a good kid, but you suspect that maybe he likes you, and you're not sure how that makes you feel, especially since you were just bent over and he could have had a nice view of your backside. You swallow hard. Sam's not sending him daggers with your eyes, so you're most likely just over-thinking things.

And it's like she knows that because she takes the opportunity to insult him just as you're acknowledging your paranoia. "Did your mom shove happy pills up your butt again, nub?"

"N-No," he squeaks. He buckles so easily under Sam's words it almost makes you ache. You know she only picks on him because he's always trying to be around you and she's accustomed to having you to herself, so you kind of feel responsible, but at the same time you're not sure you'd want to be alone with him if your notions are correct. You have to be the mediator and play on both sides.

"Sam, be nice." You shoot Freddie a pitying glance, and he looks a little less wounded, though the grin has been wiped clean off his face. Then, there's this stretch of silence because the three of you can't ease into conversation together quite yet. "So, um," you try, "Freddie, you want to come in with us?"

"Is Spencer there?" He seems puzzled to see you unlocking the door, and Sam takes advantage. "What's wrong, Frederica, can't stay home alone just yet?"

"Well, m-my mom says kids our age still require a lot of supervision and -"

Sam starts absolutely _cackling_. "Are you listening to this kid, Carls? Twelve years old, and he can't...he can't..." She's almost crying she's laughing so hard.

The worst part of this situation is that if it involved anyone but Freddie, you'd be doing the same. You'd be poking fun and trying to hold in your giggles until you exploded. Your face starts to burn, so you turn your back to them and fiddle with the lock some more until the door opens. As much as you'd like to just shut yourself inside, you don't want to be rude, and leaving Sam alone with him isn't the safest idea. Fortunately, she's starting to calm down. Freddie appears to be pretending that he doesn't exist.

"I-I'm sorry," you tell him, and you are, but you're not sure if you're apologizing for Sam or just because his mother enforces ground rules he should have outgrown by now. "Spencer likes it when I get my homework done right away, so..."

"I understand," he says softly. "I should, um, get to my own."

"Okay." But you can't bring yourself to close the door until Sam pushes you inside, throwing a casual, "Later, nub," over her shoulder and lets it slam in his face.

It occurs to you then that you don't have your backpack, which means you don't have your homework, which means while you weren't lying to Freddie about Spencer's rules about doing homework, you may as well have been. Something in your chest tightens, and for a split second you wish you could be like Sam, able to blow past these things and raid somebody's refrigerator without a care in the world.

"That was really mean, you know."

"When have I ever been accused of being nice?" She's found the carton of lo mein that's been sitting on the shelf for several days now, and there's nothing wrong with her cleaning out your leftovers but her lack of remorse is irksome.

"I know, but he's...he's just..."

"Annoying? Oblivious? Naive?" she offers before trying to shove the most food she could get on her fork in her mouth. You pause at the momentary expansion of her vocabulary and contemplate whether or not she's actually capable of absorbing knowledge by osmosis like she's always been trying to convince her teachers. Some noodles slither down her chin and fall back into the container.

"No, and would you stop eating like that? It's disgusting." She manages to swallow everything in two shots and wipe her mouth on her sleeve. It's one of those moments where you sigh and it conveys all that you're thinking without needing to tell her. "As I was saying...Freddie's a nice guy. It's not his fault his mom has awful parenting skills."

"I suppose I can sympathize with that," Sam agrees after a beat of silence, and you realize after some time that you said the 'p' word. She doesn't appear to be hurt by it, though, and you wonder if that means anything. "Sam, um, I..."

"You what?" she asks past a mouthful of pasta.

You don't know. You just wanted to get off the subject of good parents versus bad parents, but it's possible that you were never on it judging by her arching eyebrow. "It's nothing. I'm just kinda spaced, I guess. Let's watch Seattle Beat."

After you've convinced Sam that licking the bottom of the lo mein carton isn't the best idea because she doesn't know where it's been, you settle on the sofa and do just that. Within a few minutes, you've got your head on Sam's shoulder. You're not quite sure how it happens, but the two of you always end up somewhere between casual sitting and snuggling when you're on the couch together. It's nice; Sam uses this shampoo fragranced like strawberries and cream, and the scent lulls you into tranquility for a while.

"I-I'm sorry, what?" Unfortunately you're so relaxed that you only catch the tail end of what she just said.

"I said, Drake Bell's kind of attractive."

You're about to ask where such a comment came from when you come to your senses and see he's performing on television, crooning to females everywhere something cliché-ridden about love you think. You can't say you were paying attention, so you make a noise and pretend like you know what she means. She angles her head to glance down at you. "Aren't you going to agree with me?"

As a best friend, that's what she'd expect from you. Because you're both starting to experience what agonies puberty has to offer - you bought your first real bras together and have comforted one another when you found yourselves crying without substantial reasons - it only makes sense that your brains would be synched in such a way that made you both start to see what it was about guys that made adolescent girls swoon. You aren't sure what exactly makes a guy 'attractive', but since talk of it makes your stomach feel funny, that has to mean something.

"I guess," you mumble into her collarbone.

"You guess?"

She makes it sound like you're somehow in the wrong. As the camera pushes in on the singer, you analyze the contours of his face and squint in case you're missing some miniscule detail until the song draws to a close.

"His hair is nice," you decide as the audience resumes its obligatory yelling.

"...His hair," Sam repeats.

"Yeah. I-It's shiny." You don't understand her incredulous tone of voice.

"You're a funny kid," she says after she spends a minute or so staring at you. Personally, you don't get the humor.

With impeccable timing, Spencer comes through the door with an armload of groceries. "Hola, muchachas."

"Hey, Spence," Sam greets. Her attention is now entirely focused on the fact that he has food.

"Hey." Your own welcoming comes out listless, but neither of them appears to notice because Sam's spotted the ingredients for pancakes and bacon and other night-breakfast essentials being laid out on the counter. With the look of a child whose eyes are disproportional to her stomach, she requests permission to stay for dinner, not that any refusal would keep her from doing so. You imagine that Spencer is smiling with his back to the two of you when he says, "But of course."

* * *

The decision was made that chocolate chips would be added to the batter, leaving the chocolate all melty but the pancakes themselves a little undercooked. Sam grabs four of them as soon as plates are set in front of everyone, while you stick to one at a time. You're cutting your pancake into dainty little pieces because you feel guilty eating without your brother, and as expected Sam's already stuffing her face because she has the patience of a five-year-old. Soon enough, though, you're all together.

"So, what's new in the lives of Carly and Sam?"

One of the things you love most about living with your brother is that even though he asks these types of generic questions, he's genuinely interested in the answers he receives. Living with your dad was okay, but your conversations were always dry and awkward, and you found yourself giving the same old answers to the same old questions because you got the sense that you were being tuned out as he read his magazines and always replied with "That's nice," even when it wasn't.

Sam starts going on about how your science teacher admitted to not believing in gravity, and you take a bite of your food. It's doughy in texture, enough so that you have to chase it down with a sip of milk so you don't choke, and the chocolate leaves a film on the roof of your mouth. This is why you hate pancakes, but you would have felt bad saying so to Spencer. He's done so much for you in the past couple of months.

"...kind of fell asleep as he was explaining his theory. It involved molecules or something."

"A lot of science involves molecules or something." Spencer nods as if to confirm himself. "What about you, Carly Shay? You don't seem very talkative today."

You smirk. "Okay, was that an intentional rhyme, or are you just playing with my name again?"

"Perhaps, or perhaps not. Now, tell me 'bout today - show me what you've got."

You don't roll your eyes because you're irritated. You roll your eyes because the more you think about today, the more your mind travels back to the unfortunate news that Sam doesn't seem to want to reveal, and you need to stall for time. "Let's see...we had this repulsive substitute for English. Sweat stains under the arms and everything."

"Really gross," Sam agrees, spraying chewed pancake across the table.

"Ew," Spencer says, mostly referring to the fact that he just got sprayed with your friend's saliva. He cleans his arm with a napkin. "I pity you."

"Meh, it wasn't the worst part of today." And you automatically sit up a little straighter because you think she's going to just come out and say it like she did with you, but then she goes, "I got Carly to admit that a guy was attractive earlier."

It's not abnormal for Sam to seem a little attention-deficit, and you've given up trying to find linear connections between her sentences after all these years. Unfortunately, it's also the norm for Sam to shift attention off of herself just as a crucial point of conversation is reached, even if that means picking on you. "Sam!" Her name comes out of you shrill and loud, and she starts convulsing with the effort it's taking her not to chortle, and you have an urge to punch her after Spencer goes "Ooh!" and wriggles his eyebrows all suggestive-like. You don't really mean to treat it like it's some deep, dark secret of yours, but you'd rather Sam hadn't blabbed that out to Spencer. He seems to like trying to push you and see what guys you like now that Sam admits her preferences openly. It can get so _embarrassing_.

"Look, she's turning all red," Sam giggles, hand over her mouth as though it could hold her amusement in, and you hope you appear somewhat composed as your face burns.

"So who is it, Carly?" Spencer inquires, disregarding proper manners and placing one elbow on the table, hand beneath his chin. "A new guy at school?"

"Drake Bell," Sam says, and he nods and 'mmhmms' because he knows who she means with as much as she herself talks about him.

"I never outright said he was attractive," you put in to defend yourself while you still have a chance."

"Oh, right, she 'guesses' he's attractive," Sam corrects with a shake of her head and puts finger-quotes around the keyword. "And you know what she commented on? His hair." She still makes it sound outrageous.

"Well, it _is_ shiny. I bet he uses Axel hair products, 'cause he looks like he'd fit in perfectly in one of their commercials." If Spencer wasn't across the table, you'd hug him because you had been thinking the same thing at the time.

"Pfft. You guys are weird." Sam dismisses you both with a roll of her eyes and drags her fork through a puddle of syrup on her plate. Spencer shrugs.

"You have good taste, little sister," he remarks after a while, and the way he looks at you makes you want to fold into yourself. He's going to be bugging you about this for a while, you can tell.

This makes Sam bite her lip quizzically. "And how would you know what qualifies as good taste in guys, Spencer?" She does that thing where her eyebrow rises high on her forehead in accusation, and when Spencer swallows it seems to go down hard. "Well, I-I was just saying that since he seems like the kind of guy that girls your age are into these days. I didn't mean..." His cheeks turn a few shades pinker, and you know Sam's thinking somewhat perverted thoughts by her impish grin. "Uh-huh, sure." She licks her fork one last time before rising to put her plate in the sink.

"I mean it!" He's floundering for words that would validate that he does, and you bite your lips and snicker. Sam tilts her head and smirks at you from across the room.

She can turn the tables in the blink of an eye, and it always works for you in the end.

* * *

When you were ten, you and Sam started this tradition on Friday nights. After supper, you'd both go upstairs to change directly into pajamas and then find a movie to watch. Well, the movie was an idea; all too often Sam would get hungry and interrupt, or you'd launch into a popcorn fight until it was realized that you'd have to vacuum the whole kitchen. Needless to say, there was never a whole lot of movie-watching actually done, which was fine with you. Sam liked action and gore and you lived to see happily-ever-afters, meaning one of you always ended up bored, disgusted, or both. You'd figure something out.

Pulling on your silky violet pajama bottoms, you hope Sam hasn't turned your room into a disaster area. You told her that she could raid your bureau for some nightclothes, but looking back you realize that wasn't the smartest choice of words. You really ought to have designated a few unused drawers to her since she stays over so often. Biting your lip, you slide your feet into the warm softness of your slippers. "Sam, you decent?"

"Uh-huh."

When you open the door to your bathroom, you have to admit that you're impressed. There aren't clothes strewn all across the floor - rather, the space is as clean as it was five minutes ago. Sam hangs upside-down over the edge of your bed, arms stretching towards the floor. Against the vibrant colors of the nightgown she's wearing, you can't help but notice that her eyes seem to have deepened a few shades of blue in your absence, or maybe that's because of the blood going to her head and making her cheeks flushed.

"You'd better not fall."

"I won't," she says, and because she was master on the jungle gym in your elementary school days, it's believable. "Thanks for letting me borrow some clothes."

"No problem. I never thought I'd see you wearing clothes with flowers, though," Your smile is somewhat teasing, but mostly serious.

"Meh, it looked comfy, and I don't like wearing pants to bed."

You giggle. "How suggestive of you."

She sits up and turns towards you. "Admit it, Carly Shay. You couldn't resist my good looks if you tried."

It's a little ironic that she says that just after you just happened to notice that she isn't wearing a bra, but that comes as no surprise as neither of you wear those to bed. "You wish." You move to sit on one side of her. "Do you want to watch a movie tonight?"

"Nah," she decides. "I'm tired. The day's events wore me out, y'know?"

You open your mouth to retort that she's notorious for sleeping in study hall, but then it snaps shut because you do know, now that she has a valid reason to feel worn out. "Yeah. Okay. So um, you want to sleep then?"

"Carls, it's seven at night. I'm not _that_ tired. Well, okay, I'm always tired, but you know what I mean."

"I was kidding." You weren't, but you don't want to look stupid, so you force your mouth into what you hope is a smile. The gears in your head have been turning all day, so even when you're thinking you aren't really thinking.

She knows this. Her face falls in increments until her mouth is just a line and her gaze is unreadable. That scares you a little because that means she's thinking something serious, and seriousness with Sam Puckett makes for difficult topics that you aren't always sure how to handle at first. In a soft voice you coax, "Sam?"

"I don't want you to worry about me." She's talking to her hands and not you. "I don't want this to be like when you found out stuff about my family and you wanted to make everything better all the time."

Her words hit somewhere deep in your chest because your mind had just been traveling back to those times, and your maternal instinct is already pushing to the surface. You don't know what to say. You don't know what she wants you to say.

When it becomes clear to her that you've been rendered mute, she falls back onto the bedspread and lets her legs unfurl. Silence has always been okay between the two of you, a time of unspoken understanding in which nobody has to speak in order for thoughts to be known. You eventually lie down too, only because there's something lonely about having her right there but being unable to see her.

Her head is turned away from you; the strawberries and cream scent settles in your nostrils. You touch a few strands of her blonde hair, admiring how the ends seem to curl around your fingers. It's long enough to reach down past her shoulder blades now, long and shiny. You almost wish your hair was like hers, but then it wouldn't be as beautiful.

"Sam," you say after a few minutes or hours or days. "How come you didn't tell Spencer?"

"Because he's like you," she replies, and it rolls off her tongue so quickly and coldly that you're hurt until you recall her earlier comment, and then you're not sure you blame her.

"We don't have to talk about it." When you run your fingers through her hair, they catch, and she winces. "Sorry."

"'S'okay. To both of those." Her muscles tighten as she stretches and sighs. "I figure it's gonna happen sooner or later. I should get used to it."

"Mm," you agree in a vague manner, not sure what's safe to touch upon and what isn't. "Which one of them is moving out?"

"Dad's thinking about renting an apartment someplace. Not here in Bushwell, though. Somewhere more..."

"Low-budget?"

"Yeah."

"Do you...do you think you'll end up living with your mom?"

"I don't know." There's silence between you again for several minutes before another, more tentative inquiry finds its way out into the open before you even consider what response you might get for a response.

"Sam? What's it like...to know that your parents are splitting?"

She doesn't flinch or move away or smack you, all reactions you would have expected. In fact, she doesn't move at all, save for the slow rise and fall of her chest under a thin layer of fabric. When you lean towards her, her eyes are closed, and judging by the dark circles beneath them, she's more tired then she let on.

You turn the television on low for some background noise and eventually end up turning the lights off and taking refuge beneath the covers, careful not to nudge Sam very much in the process. With the sleep timer set, you zone out to a rerun of Girly Cow, and your eyelids grow heavy faster than expected. Just as you're drifting off, you feel movement at the edge of the bed, then an absence of weight. Warmth settles next to you, and an arm snakes over your hip and pulls you close.

Sometime later, too early or too late for you to be coherent, words settle in the shell of your ear:

"It's like having all your internal organs break free from whatever holds them together because so much else is coming unglued. It's like falling and not knowing when the pain is gonna come."

A pause.

"It's like you're a little kid again because you realize you believed in those sugar-coated fairy tales about happy endings and forever, when you really should have listened to what the characters were trying to tell you in the first place." There's the sound of slow, even breaths.

"The sky is falling, Carly."

You tell yourself it was a dream.


	3. Chapter 3

Sam doesn't have people to tell secrets to besides you. She's never said so in those words, but you know that's how it is because once when you were fooling around in equipment you were too big for at the playground you were too old to be visiting, she poked her head out from under the slide as you were climbing the ladder and remarked, "Carly Shay, I've never had a friend like you."

And you stopped at the sight of her toothy grin, the grin that made your face all hot like it does when you get complements you don't expect. And maybe it's because you were higher up than expected, but your palms got clammy and the wooden planks you were standing on seemed to shift. It could have been just the magnitude of some underlying message hitting you because after you swayed slightly she whispered "I'm scared of heights, too."

You nodded and found your bearings, recognizing this as a piece of a more vulnerable side of Sam Puckett that should be left untold to anyone else. You were always awful at keeping secrets, though, and that made you scared to mention it to her. Time around her had lessened her intimidation factor, but not completely. What if you let something slip and she gave you a black eye? You couldn't have that happen, not when this tentative friendship was just making progress.

You started thinking of your mind as a little black box after that, with a lock that you could only click open in times of solitude. The metaphor must have worked because over time you accumulated more and more little tidbits about Sam, and as you locked them away you found that you rather liked knowing things about her that nobody else did. It meant you were a big important person in someone's world, and you had never been that before, not like this.

But lately you're frightened that your little black box is getting too overcrowded because every spare second that isn't devoted to academia is flooded with these flashbacks, followed by her stony face as she dropped the d-bomb about her parents. Juxtaposed, you wouldn't know that they were about the same person if you hadn't been there. You can't push the contrast aside.

Every time you take note of it, it tugs at your insides, at what would be your heartstrings if they are indeed a part of the human anatomy and not just an expression used in the reviews of sappy novels. You forced back your desire to cry when she told you; it makes no sense that you'd want to cry now, in the middle of Mr. Howard's history lesson, but you do. At least he's off on a tangent about the differences between white and black parts of society before the Civil War, his tone of voice changing whenever something directly racist is mentioned. As much as you sometimes think he hates the people he teaches, he sure can be passionate about the content of his lessons. He's the kind of person that doesn't just talk with his hands, but his whole body.

"They picked cotton all day long with very little water to drink. I suppose their masters thought that a darker _skin color_ meant they could _endure_ more work under the summer heat..." As he paces back and forth, you wish he made it easier to take notes on his lectures. The lines on your paper blur; your eyes are stinging as you blink and blink to try and clear your vision. You scribble in in the margin, defining shapes with little lines. Triangles, parallelograms, simple things that don't keep you from half-listening in case Mr. Howard asks you a question, which he does as soon as your mind wanders almost completely out of the classroom.

"Um, the cotton gin?" you say and try to keep the majority of the apprehension out of your voice.

"Correct."

It's so sad how you don't even have to try while so many other kids sit slumped in their seats, scared that the boisterous teacher in the front of the room will have them condemned if they so much as stutter. You don't blame them, not really, but you feel like a show-off now atop of your unintentional empathizing, the latter of which makes no sense when you think about it. Sam and self-pity mix like oil and water, and she prefers somewhat unconventional ways of expressing her feelings (i.e., giving Gibby wedgies whenever he rises from his seat), but she hasn't been any more violent than normal so maybe she really is more okay than you think.

She catches your eye on your way to your next class all smirky, which would make you feel so much better if you hadn't been trained to recognize the devious gleam in her bright eyes, and as much as you'd like to believe that she's just extra happy right now, you're inclined to think that she's up to something.

"What did you do?" you accuse with intensity that's not supposed to be making her grin like that.

"You're kinda cute when you're mad," Sam remarks after a pause, and you were about to scold her but your breath and your argument kind of dissipate and what's the use anyway when she's never been one to back down?

"Calm down, cupcake," she adds as your face warms because she's got this wonderful knack for knowing when your emotions are at their peak even when she's dancing around some of the issues which cause your aggravation. "I haven't done anything yet."

"Yet."

"My latest scheme still has some kinks in it." She sounds like she's discussing something as minute as the weather, or whether she's going to wear her dark jeans or her washed-out ones tomorrow, except in this case she's not asking for any opinions on her choices. Because you're her best friend and you care about whether or not she gets caught by the school authorities or worse, you're compelled to say something anyway.

"Instead of these 'schemes', have you ever considered trying something new, like, say, I don't know, not causing trouble?"

A laugh bursts from her chest like she's been having trouble keeping it dormant until you finished your sentence, and maybe she did because this isn't your first time making this kind of suggestion. "That's an even crazier idea than what I was thinking of."

"And what were you thinking of?" The words tumble out of your mouth like a reflex, even though when Sam takes on that tone of voice, you don't really want to know.

"Eh, it's nothing I can do right now," she responds in a tone that's way less ominous than it probably should be. "Maybe someday," she adds with a sigh, and her eyes gloss over as her mind wanders to distant places that good girls like you should never know of. "You wanna come to my place after school?"

"What, the food in my fridge is no longer good enough for you?"

"No, it's not that. I just got stuff I gotta do, y'know?" She flicks gray fuzz off her shoulder and then looks at you, and even though 'stuff' could mean anything from cleaning her room to placing explosives in her mailbox like she keeps saying she wants to do (enough to scare off the mailman whom she thinks goes through their mail but not enough to blow anything up, you hope), you need a change of scenery. "Okay."

* * *

The first time you went to Sam's house, you walked right past it. You didn't mean to, of course, but somehow even after all that time you spent with Sam proving every single other rumor about her home life wrong, subconsciously you were expecting her to live somewhere different. You didn't expect a chain of interconnected cardboard boxes lined with blankets in a back alley where she and her mom and her dad huddled for warmth during the night, and you couldn't believe people actually said that was so with conviction. But you knew Sam was infamous for stealing and beating up anyone who posed as a threat and/or annoyance, so you figured she had a reason for being that way. You expected to have to wander into dark allies and past drunkards who would watch you with glazed, hungry eyes and run at you when you got close enough for them to grab you and beg for money or rape you or something. Being you, you wondered if it was the 'or something's you should be more worried about, but there couldn't be much worse than rape, you decided, and didn't allow yourself to ponder any what ifs.

So needless to say, the day you were supposed to go to Sam's place for the first time, you were a wreck. You tried really hard not to be, but before school had even let out, every fingernail except the thumb on your left hand had been chewed down to nubs and you drowned a bottle of water within two minutes. Sam just looked at you funny because she didn't know any better, and seeing her confused had never made you so relieved in your whole life.

You didn't tell her you were scared, because back then you always got a little anxious around Sam and you had trouble deciphering whether it was her that you feared or how her world and way of thinking was so different than yours that you felt so vulnerable in her presence. She ran the whole time while you hung back and skimmed your thumb over your nubby fingernails because there was something close to envy sloshing with the water in your stomach and you didn't understand why.

And suddenly there was one point where you couldn't see her in front of you anymore, and you panicked because you thought she had been taken right in front of your eyes, off to be raped or something, and it was all your fault. That is, until she stuck her hand out and waved it in front of your face while being all sing-songy. "Carly, hell-loo, wake up. You passed my house."

And when you looked where she was pointing you realized that her definition of a house wasn't all that different from yours after all. The red shutters against the white background were really kind of nice. Loud, but nice.. Kind of like Sam.

"How quaint," you remember saying, but you were pretty sure you hadn't made your mouth move to say it, and Sam cocked her head because what kind of a jank adjective is quaint, anyway. But you made yourself smile, and you shoved your nubby fingernail hand in your pocket feeling like a skunkbag for having any doubts in your best friend.

That's kind of how you feel right now as Sam checks her mailbox and nothing explodes. She wouldn't have put anything dangerous in there with you around, and the realization makes you hide a grin behind your fingers for no reason you can determine.

"Junk mail, junk mail, bills, bills, junk mail, geez, why can't we ever get anything interesting for crying out loud?" She glares at the mail like it planted itself in the mailbox just because it could.

"Don't get mad at the mail, Sam. It's not its fault that it's useless." You nudge her and start towards her front steps.

"I guess it's not entirely useless," she drawls thoughtfully as she digs in her pocket for her house key. "I could burn it." It was more than likely intended to be an offhanded comment, but there's a note of intensity in her voice that you would know anywhere.

"Sam." She turns around to look at you, and her eyes are huge and bright with whatever precarious images float in her mind. "No."

"Aw, come on, Carlyyy," she whines, poking out her lower lip. "You're no fun." She curls her fingers in and paws at you like the sad little abused puppies on those public service announcements, and something coils tightly in your chest looking into those big blue eyes of hers.

"Sam, you are not a dog. Let us in."

She grunts dejectedly and obeys. Maybe she's a lot more like a puppy than you thought.

"Good girl," you say, and you dig your nails into her scalp a little when you ruffle her hair. She grins, and you're a little disturbed at the way she sits on the floor and scratches her ear with her foot.

* * *

"I hate banana pudding," Sam says. "It's pee-colored and it tastes funny."

"That's random," you say as you swallow a spoonful of the pudding in question and realize that yeah, if you sort of closed one eye and squinted with the other while looking at a distance, there would be a resemblance in color between the two. Sort of. "Why would you make the pudding if you hate it?"

"I thought it was vanilla." She takes a tiny lick off her spoon and makes a face.

"Sam, there were bananas on the packaging the powder came in."

"How was I supposed to know vanilla doesn't come from bananas?" She's asking you this with a completely serious expression which concerns you a little bit, but you just bob your shoulders and that apparently suffices as a response. She takes another audible swallow and it doesn't go down easy judging by the way her face contorts.

"Okay," you laugh. "Watching you eat the funky-colored pudding is amusing and all, but _why_?"

"I'm _hungry_," she emphasizes with something close to a moan. "And I wanted _chicken_, but there wasn't any chicken, so then I wanted pudding, but then it turned out to be...this." She turns her spoon over and a glob of pudding plops into her bowl with a wet sound. "Life is so unfair."

"It is," you agree. There's nothing left of your pudding other than what you can scrape off the sides of your bowl with your spoon, and Sam's got this oversized portion that she won't eat. If you were anything more like her, you'd reach over and nab another bite, but instead you just offer to take her dishes to the sink. She puts her bowl inside yours and there's this awkward moment when you're both trying to get the bowls balanced within one another even though they're the same size until you just decide to take a bowl (one of which is covered in goop) and spoon in each hand.

"I'm all pudding-y now, thanks to you." Sam doesn't look sorry in the least, but you weren't really scolding her as much as you were making a playful comment. Flicking the water on, you place the dishes in the sink and in the process end up brushing against your shirt. "Aw, man! Sam, do you have any of those special detergent pens around here anywhere?"

"Nope, sorry." Once again, she doesn't appear to be.

"Aw, man!" you exclaim again because this is one of your favorite shirts so repetition seems necessary.

Sam comes over and inspects the cream-colored stain as you gently run your index finger over it so the sticky substance won't run any further, and as you lick your finger off she shakes her head at you. "It's just a little spot, Carls. I think you're overreacting. Just bring it up to your mouth and suck it off. It's what I do when I get barbecue sauce on _my _shirts."

Something about the way she says that reminds you of how all the perverted boys in your seventh grade health class turned everything into jokes that sailed over your head for the most part, but in the back of your mind there was an inkling of comprehension that always made your insides feel like they were full of liquid heat.

"Sam, I'm not gonna use saliva to get food off my shirt."

"M'kay. It's your loss -"

She's cut off by the sound of a turning doorknob and shuffling feet, and she takes off mid-sentence so fast that she would have kicked up dust had you been outside. Sam's like soda under pressure, bottled up and ready to expel extra energy at any moment, but this seems different. Her dad must be home.

"Sammy." His soft tenor voice reaches your ears and confirms your suspicions, and you stop in your tracks when he puts plastic bags of what you presume to be groceries down and wraps his arms around his daughter, letting her fold into him like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Sam has always been her father's child. When she needed something at school, she called her dad. If she wanted to know if they were having chicken or steak at her house for supper, she called her dad. The time she puked in the middle Miss Briggs' English lecture, she waited for her dad in the nurse's office, and when he got there, the first thing he said was "That's my girl." You knew Sam loved her dad, and you knew Sam's dad loved her, but neither one of them were really the type to express their affections in very conspicuous ways. So seeing them hug and hold onto each other like they are is a little unexpected, and there's a tightness within your ribcage that you're making an effort to ignore, but all you can think about is that Colonial Shay is somewhere in a submarine across the globe because some people are too busy to come home and hold their children like that. You used to think Stanley was that way, but Sam told you not too long ago that he would be able to take a little more time off work while the papers (a euphemism that you're both happy to use) were being finalized. "He'll be around more." Nonchalance was hard for her to pull off with her face lit up like Christmas.

"Is that a ham?" Sam wants to know once they've pulled back from one another, and you sense some irony in comparing an earlier facial expression with the Christmas holiday. You look down at the stain on your shirt, take a drop of hand soap from the bottle on the counter, and concentrate on rubbing it in.

"Indeed it is. I was going to call you and see what you wanted for supper, but I thought I'd take my best guess."

"You're an awesome guesser."

"I know."

There's white lather working between your fingers now. You make a note to find out where the bubbles come from. Bubbles is a fun word, you think. Bubbles, bubbles, bub-

"Carly?"

"Yeah?" You look up and vaguely realize that you were scrubbing somewhat maniacally. Your thumb still moves in small, almost undetectable circles against the fabric.

"Are you _still_ stuck on that stupid stain?" Sam asks you with a somewhat knowing grin.

"It's a very stupid stain," you clarify, nodding for emphasis and wiping your soapy hand on your jeans.

"Too bad we don't have any detergent pens," Stanley muses. It's creepy, how intuitive he can be; sometimes you think he can read your thoughts better than Sam because he's always got a calculating look on his face and sometimes he comments on things in the very same way you did. Like now. You sort of inwardly flinch when he walks over to the fridge and meets your eye as he's unloading the grocery bags. "Nice to see you, Carly. Can I get you anything?"

"N-No thanks. Sam and I already had some pudding and stuff." You shrug. "I'm all set."

"So that's what that is," Stanley murmurs, eying the yellowish substance in the mixing bowl the two of you hadn't gotten around to cleaning up. "Sam allowed for that much to be left over?"

"It was banana. She didn't like it." You shrug.

"Sam turned down a food not in the vegetable category?" He glances over at her, incredulous. "Unheard of."

"It was gross," she confirms. "Not like vanilla in the slightest."

Stanley shakes his head, muttering. "Kid must have a fever."

"I do not," Sam defends. "The stuff tastes like feet."

"How do you even know what feet taste like?" You jump back into conversation only to wonder if you really want to know.

"I don't, but it tastes like what I imagine feet would taste like." You think to yourself that feet must taste pretty good if she's right, but you're not willing to try it.

Stanley dips his finger in the leftover pudding for a taste test. "Sam, this is vanilla pudding."

"It is not," she says, but she's soon following in his example and tasting it again. "Ew, definitely not. I know my puddings, sir."

He shrugs and turns back to putting things in the fridge. You hear the word 'gullible', barely audible, and Sam shouts "Hey!"

It's kind of cute, you observe, the way Sam and her dad banter like this. And it's kind of weird, seeing Stanley expose a sense of humor that you were never around to see, but again, this is Sam's father, and Sam has always been her father's child. People have told you that your father is a funny guy too. You wouldn't know, but you want to take their word for it.

"I think," you tell them over the sound of Sam's laughter as her dad gives her a merciless noogie, "I'm gonna head back to Bushwell. Spencer's probably wondering where I am."

All activity stops.

"You're welcome to call him and see if you can stay for dinner," Stanley offers, and Sam adds "We're having ham."

A ghost of a smile drifts across your face. "I know. But I should go anyway. I have t-to - write an essay." You hope your stammer isn't obvious.

Sam's face falls, to your relief. "Can't you just skip it, just this once?"

"Sorry, Sam. I really need a good grade." You _are_ sorry, just not for the reason you say, and your hands ball into fists against your side. "Maybe some other time."

You decline the ride Stanley offers, and once you get outside you take off running. The part of you responsible for your composure has been nothing more than an ever-fraying thread, and your objective is to get to your apartment before it snaps. The Bushwell building is in sight too soon and not soon enough; you're like that rabbit on those TV commercials for batteries, you think as you bolt past your disgruntled doorman - you feel like you could just keep going and going, even if your destination is on the other side of Washington state.

Strangely enough, you're able to slip into your apartment without making much noise, other than the sound of the door locking behind you and your labored breathing. Why can't you run like this in gym class?

Spencer is nowhere to be seen, but the television is on, so he's probably upstairs. You sort of fall onto your sofa instead of turning around to sit on it, but that's just as good, you think as you press your cheek into the couch cushion with suddenly bleary eyes. A guy on TV is yelling and waving his arms at some other guy in what you think for some reason is confused Portuguese, and the sounds of the language remind you of the disgruntled noises your brother sometimes makes when he sculpts. That would explain a lot.

Footfalls sound behind you - speak of the devil - coming down the stairs, off towards the kitchen, before a pause. "Carly?"

"Mmf."

He comes closer; a hand lightly rubs the small of your back. "You okay, kiddo?"

"Why wouldn't I be okay?" You roll over onto your back so you're looking at him when you speak, but you're also kind of asking yourself.

"Well, you're laying down on the couch looking exhausted, and your face is a little flushed." He touches your cheek and jumps back. "You're freezing!"

"My body is kind of on fire, actually." You go to stretch out your legs, but they feel like rubber that's been stretched beyond capacity. "I ran home from Sam's."

"That's a long run on a chilly night," Spencer remarks. He can't run across the street to Skybucks without getting winded. "You want a blanket?"

"That'd be nice."

He eventually helps you sit up so he has a space for himself, and you settle with your head in his lap and the blanket tucked securely around you up to your chin. The adrenaline from your run has completely drained from your system, leaving your body ready for sleep. Your mind, however, is sort of circling between all the images of Sam and Sam with her dad, and really it's like Sam is always on your mind but somehow this is a different kind of persistence that makes your head thump in time with your heart. Funny how the ache behind your temples isn't as strong as the one in your chest.

"Spencer," you murmur, and you sound like your mind is still halfway between Sam's and Bushwell.

"Yeah?"

And with everything spinning in your head you know you had a question somewhere in there, but now that you're about to ask, you can't find it. Somehow, though, you manage to smile when you ask, "What do you suppose feet taste like?"

"_Feet_? Like, what's attached to our legs?"

"Yeah."

"Well," Spencer starts, rightfully caught off guard. "I can't say I've actually tasted such a delicacy, but if I had to take a guess...I don't know what it is, but somehow I'm stuck on the idea that banana pudding comes close."

"Right," you giggle. "Of course."

"...Carly, are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah. I think I'm just getting a cold is all."


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Fixed the formatting issues for this chapter. I was so excited to post that I forgot. Sorry guys. ._.**

**Edit: The site messed with my formatting again. I had to re-edit line breaks in all of my chapters. x.x Sorry for the inbox spam to all of you who have this on alert.  
**

Ever since you hit puberty, getting out of bed in the morning has become one of life's greatest challenges. You're not the type to sleep away the mornings and wait until noon to shower and dress - you've had routines programmed in your head for as long as you can remember, and you can't get out of bed after nine without feeling like your day is being wasted - but you do have a tendency to spend a lot of time halfway between slumber and consciousness with your senses half turned-off until it occurs to you that you should get up.

It starts the same way every morning. You'd have your legs curled up to your chest and your blankets pulled up to your chin, and you'd first become aware of the light pitter-patter of rain on the roof, or on rare occasions, rays of sunlight pouring through your window and refracting on your wall and towards your face. Either one was pleasurable in their own way, and you liked to just lay there for a while and drink them in while semi-conscious. Then, you'd roll over, and one of two things would happen. Your elbows or your knees or some other part of you would collide with a shoulder blade or a stomach or a hip, and there might be an exhale of breath on the other's part, but no more. You'd mentally say sorry and be mentally forgiven, and you'd lay there and lay there until you didn't want to anymore.

But there was a chance that things could happen differently. Sometimes - very few times, but still sometimes - when you rolled over, there'd be nothing but space beside you, and your nerves would be so used to you bumping into something with shape and body heat that to instead find empty air was enough to startle you awake.

It happens this morning. One second you're almost lulled back into sleep with the sound of your own even breathing, and the next your limbs are falling into your mattress and your heart is banging against your ribs in a way that can't be healthy for a girl your age. You remind yourself how to breathe and then get out of bed because sleeping once you're fully awake is futile, even if it is five-thirty AM.

Your bathroom doesn't have a shower in it, though, and you almost feel guilty for making your way into the one next to Spencer's room at this hour. As you undress, though, you can hear a rumbling through the walls and something that sounds like "bendy straws," and you have to smile because you can't recall a time when your brother is any more loveable than when he sleep-talks.

Showers are a wonderful invention, you think as you rub your body down with this shower gel which smells like a cherry blossom according to the label. Not just because there would be a lot more smelly people if showers didn't exist, but because the act of it was probably the most relaxing thing in the world. You'd bet anything that bathing has a lot more benefits than yoga as far as releasing tension goes.

Your skin is pink and shriveled when you shut the shower off, and you think of the water bill a little guiltily because you don't know how long you were in there but you love the almost scalding tinge the water gets when it's just right for you. You sort of cringe when you open the door and cold air whips past you but it probably serves you right.

It's only after you've toweled off that you realize that you didn't grab yourself any clothes, which presents a problem. What if Spencer's up and he sees you going to your room in just a towel? Biting your lip, you decide you're going to have take that risk, and the worst he would do in that situation is make a surprised noise, cover his eyes and flee. Although, you think, hopefully not in that order. You really would rather not he run away and hit his head on something, lest he get a concussion. Similar things have happened.

You venture out of the bathroom and down the hall, trying to make as little noise as possible. When you're in your bedroom and the coast appears to be clear, you stop clutching your towel to you like a lifeline and let your arms fall to your sides. Opening one of your bureau drawers, you just kind of stare at its contents for a bit. Decisions, decisions. This is why you try to pick out clothes before you go to bed.

You pull out your favorite purple hoodie with the silver stars and find orange socks hanging from the front pouch. That's odd, because you can understand finding a couple stray dollar bills left in your laundry, but you've never carried around socks in case of emergency. In fact, you're pretty sure nobody does that, not even Spencer's best friend whom you've only ever known as Socko. They must have ended up in there during the wash. You toss them up on the top of the bureau and begin the search for your grey socks, the ones that are a little worn out at the heel but still the softest ones you own.

You come up with one of them, somehow astray from its match at the very bottom of the drawer, and after a while you realize that you're spending a ridiculous amount of time trying to find where the other one went, but they're your favorites and you're stuck on them because how many places can a sock disappear to?

Maybe you're a little too stuck on them because you don't recognize another presence behind you until a soft voice says "Carly," and you slam your knee against the dresser while a scream very nearly tears through your vocal cords.

And Sam just stands in the doorway silently laughing because she probably has no idea what it's like to have somebody creep in on her while she's in just a towel, but then again, she's always been quick to hop over boundary lines.

"Sam." Her name comes out sort of choked because pain is still shooting down your leg, and whatever sternness you wanted to have in your voice is probably canceled out by how funny you look as you hobble to lean on the dresser.

"Who the heck showers at five-thirty in the morning?" she asks out of the blue, like it just struck her as odd that you're wearing nothing but a piece of cloth, and you want to say something witty like What's this about showering? Oh, by the way do you like my new dress? but all you can do is answer her honestly. "People who wake up in the morning and can't get back to sleep. Who the heck breaks in to apartments at five-thirty in the morning?"

"I did not break in," she emphasizes. "The door was unlocked and I came inside."

"Oh, because that's completely normal non-delinquent behavior." You straighten up, flex your knees slightly and then you just look at her because even though you've seen Sam in passing, it's been about a week since you've had a real, normal conversation.

Then it hits you that you're still naked under your towel and the conversation no longer seems normal at all.

"I have to talk to you," she says, and you can't meet her eyes because even though she's not looking at you - she'd never be looking at you, not like that - and you've changed in gym locker rooms together for years now, this feels different in a way that makes your chest and neck feel hot, like her gaze is burning you.

"U-Um, well, I'm not really adequately dressed at the moment," you tell her because she obviously hasn't noticed. "Can it wait a few minutes?"

She nods and you turn your back to her, gathering up your clothes while grasping the bit of towel that's keeping you shielded because you swear it's slipping little bit by little bit, and you shut your bathroom door like you always do when you get dressed even when you're around your best friend.

You've always wondered if other girls are that self-conscious or if they leave their bathroom doors wide open. (Sam does, but she's not like other girls. She can even pee and hold a conversation at the same time.) Once you're modestly covered, you wash your face, brush your teeth, and dry your hair the rest of the way before you realize that one, you're still missing a sock, and two, this took way longer than a few minutes.

But Sam can sometimes have a surprising amount of patience, and she's lounged across your bed watching an infomercial on exercise equipment like it's something people do all the time.

"The people on here sound so fake," she remarks with hazy amusement usually saved for bad puns. She's got one foot crossed over the other, the top one clad in the very sock you were looking for. It figures.

"Yeah, they usually do," you say over the announcer that wants you to call right now for a reduced price that's probably still not worth the results. You decide on plain white socks, then sit up on the bed next to her.

"I wonder how many of these guys' pictures were photodocked," you think aloud in reference to the before and after photos being displayed on screen. "Some of them don't even look like the same people."

"I know," she concurs. "And some of them don't even look like they need to lose weight - like the naturally skinny types."

"I don't think anyone can be 'naturally skinny'. I mean, everyone has to work for it somewhat."

"I bet you don't. You'll probably never be fat in your life."

"Pfft," you say like it's an actual response because you don't know what else to say to that since you've had a lanky build for as long as you can remember and who knows? "I have a stomach."

"A flat stomach."

"It's not completely flat," you retort, your hand going to your abdomen automatically.

Sam turns over, facing you. "Lemme see."

"Why?" you laugh, heat creeping to the back of your neck again for a reason you're not sure of.

"I need proof. I don't believe you." She reaches over for the fabric of your shirt, barely catching it between her fingers before you lean away.

"Seriously now?"

"Mmhmm. C'mon, it's just your stomach. It's not like you have to take your whole shirt off or anything. Unless, y'know, you want to." She smirks and you try to, but your lips keep twitching weird.

You cave. "Okay. Gimme space to lie down."

She sits up a little further so she's completely upright, but instead of scooting over like you expected, she pulls you back so you fall into her lap. "Geez."

"Sorry," she says in a way that means she's not, and her eyes glimmer with subtle mischief as you start to unzip your hoodie, and you think about how it's something about those eyes that get you doing crazy things like practically take off your clothes just to prove a point. Your fingers fumble with the end of your shirt, rolling it up to about an inch below your chest.

"There's like, nothing to you," she murmurs, her eyes traveling from your belly button up to your ribs, and something inside you quivers from being all exposed. Her finger lightly traces your skin, cool as it moves up from your side. "I can feel your ribs." She looks you in the eye and you have the sensation of sinking further into the mattress. "That's like, not right."

Your giggle sounds all disjointed, like it's bubbling up from the depths of you and exiting your throat in bursts. "Just because I don't eat ten tons of meat a day doesn't mean I'm unhealthy."

"Whatever. I say you need to eat more, and starting today, I'm going to fatten you up," she tells you in a very matter-of-fact manner that shouldn't be as funny as it is.

"Oh, really - and how do you plan to do that?" you inquire when you know you can talk without laughter getting in the way.

"Easy - I'll start by taking you out to lunch. Or breakfast, if you prefer." She raises an eyebrow in questioning, and you shrug against the comforter. "Lunch is good. I'm not a big breakfast person."

"Then it's settled. This afternoon, we're headed" - here, she takes a pause for what you guess is dramatic effect, raises her index finger in the air and shouts the end of her sentence in declaration - "to B.F. Wangs!"

Far off, Spencer shouts, "Parakeets!" before there's a yelp and a loud thump.

"He fell out of bed again," you say before Sam can ask, and you roll your eyes before pulling down your shirt and getting up to make sure he didn't split his lip open with his teeth like last time.

* * *

You're beginning to think that Sam's idea of going to B.F. Wangs is just yet another of her many excuses to eat vast quantities of meat. You really should have recognized this earlier, as the restaurant was a meat emporium of sorts that sold everything from the most tender of poultry to the most juicy of steaks, which in Sam's world pretty much translated to a slice of heaven on Earth - but it hadn't struck you that way until you saw Sam ogling the menu with eyes which rivaled her stomach. Still, it's a nice gesture, and you do like B.F. Wangs - just not in a crazed, act-like-a-primitive-life-form sort of way.

"Hungryyyy." Sam growls low in her throat, her vision darting between the menu and the waiter that had placed you in your booth while probably attempting to send telepathic death threats.

You pry the menu from her white-knuckled fingers knowing that it's one of the only things she's read cover-to-cover and memorized. "Calm yourself," you command, squeezing one of her hands to make her focus. "We've only been here three minutes." Her expression is hopeless.

"I haven't eaten in like, three hours. That's one-hundred-eighty minutes in which my stomach has been deprived." She whimpers and laces your fingers together across the table, motioning with her free hand as though she's going to rip her hair out.

You blink. "Did you just do math? In your head?"

Her face is somber. "Yes. That's how serious this situation is for me."

Fortunately, her savior arrives in the form of man who wears too much hair gel and whose nametag reads 'Jerome'. He smiles in that plastered-on way that comes from working too long in a place where the air conditioner has been broken, which is likely since the only circulating air comes from a lone fan by the door.

"What can I get for you two lovely ladies?" he asks in that creepy way that male wait staff really shouldn't use with young girls like you.

Sam rambles off a list that puts a few more beads of sweat on Jerome's brow and makes you laugh inside because you know it as well as she does. Something crosses his face, though, something unpleasant that makes your insides churn. You don't know what it is, but you sort of don't feel hungry anymore.

As soon as Jerome is out of earshot, Sam leans forward, her eyes large in her face. "I kind of wish he was on the menu, to be honest. I almost asked."

"Do you, like, not have any control over your hormones?" Your voice comes out a little edgier than you wanted it to, and she backs up. "Well, sor-ry. I didn't mean anything bad by it - he's just good-looking, that's all."

"Everyone is good-looking to you."

"Did you not see him?" Sam gestures in his direction, where he's got his back to you as he takes orders across the room.

"I saw him," you say. "I just don't see anything in him. Nothing special."

Sam looks at you as though a third eye has appeared in the middle of your forehead. "What's wrong with you?" she says, and even though she's not being mean, the words hit you hard in the pit of your stomach.

"He - he got a funny look on his face, okay? He got a funny look on his face and it was just weird."

"Funny how?"

"Funny like...like...I dunno."

He does it again when your food comes - the French fries with cheddar and bacon strips rather than bits, the steak and cheese subs and the chicken wings that B.F. Wangs is known for. He smiles with a mouth full of white teeth at first, but then his mouth abruptly drops into a thin line, and you know. You knew before, but you didn't want to say it, because for some reason it makes you want to throw up.

"I saw," Sam says, her mouth hovering over the chicken wing in her hand. Her eyes meet yours, azure pools of puzzlement. "He seemed mad, kind of. When he talked to us."

You let her eat for a while before you tell her, talk about nothing and wait until she's gotten through a sub and half the cheddar fries before you take a long sip of Peppy Cola and tell her. "I think," you start, and your mouth goes dry like it hadn't just been hydrated. "...I think he was mad because we're holding hands."

Sam's chewing slows considerably as she notices that your hands are still indeed linked and in plain view. The fingers intertwined with yours twitch as though she forgot they were there. "Oh," she says after a while.

And then she pushes the fries in your direction and reminds you that you you're supposed to be eating more. All the really cheesy fries are working through Sam's digestive tract, but you take a few anyway. Her fingers slide away from yours when she goes to push back a lock of her hair and she starts up about nothing again.

When Jerome returns to ask how your meals are, his face is more relaxed, and it makes you hurt in places you can't explain, but you force a smile and say "Great. Everything is great." And Sam, being Sam, agrees with a mouthful of steak and cheese.

It takes a while for Sam to notice that you're not really engaged in conversation anymore - she's never been that observant, you bitterly think at one point - but she drops her train of thought which had something to do with Drake Bell for you, and that's something.

"What's wrong?" she wants to know, and for some reason it really bothers you that she doesn't just know, but then again, you're not entirely sure either.

"...I need to go outside for a minute," you answer after a pause that lasts way too long. You push your plate back and get up from your seat, and it makes you look like a real jerk but you don't care.

There aren't any benches to sit on outside, so you pace. You pace a little beyond B.F. Wangs, where the building ends and the shadow of another one is cast in the space between them, and it looks like a suitable place to hide, so you do. You hide in the in the inky shadow until there's arms wrapped around your shoulders and you realize that you're crying. Sam hushes you, keeps you tight against her until you squirm for her to let go.

"What's wrong?" she asks again as you rub your writs across your face.

"I don't...know," you whisper, between shallow breaths. You're lying again. You're lying, and she knows it.

"Tell me," she says in a firm voice, and all of a sudden the twisty hurt feelings morph into this ugly anger you didn't know you had.

"Why'd you do that?"

"Do what?"

"You know," you try and accuse, but it's stupid because there's no way she could unless she's a mind-reader. Her jaw clenches.

"Carly, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"It was obvious! Y-You got all weirded-out in there when I t-told you about what stupid Jerome was all mad about, and you l-let go of my hand!" You stammer.

Her face smooths out in a way that unsettles you. "You mean to tell me," she says slowly, "that all this is happening...because I stopped holding your hand." It's a statement, not a question, the kind of statement that puts what you say in a perspective that gives you the appearance of an idiot.

"You thought it was weird."

"Carly, we do things like that all the time!" she practically shouts at you. "It's a comfort thing, like hugging, except we had been doing it for way too long, so I had to let go!"

"What do you mean, 'way too long'?"

She lowers her voice to a more controlled volume. "Carly, if you were to see people hugging for several minutes straight, wouldn't that be weird?"

You honestly hadn't been expecting that. "...Well, yeah, but -"

"And holding hands is like hugging for us. It has to stop at some point."

When she puts it like that, it's entirely too simple. You close your mouth, all the words you wanted to say dissipating from your mind and the tip of your tongue when she holds you close again.

"You okay, Cupcake?" You can feel the words on your scalp and nod against her shoulder.

"Sam?" you say, once you ease up again.

"Yes, Carly?"

"What did you want to talk about? This morning, I mean?" The vague memory of her saying they needed to talk that morning had sparked in your mind awhile ago, but there hadn't been a place to mention it."

She swallows hard. You wonder for a moment if she heard you, but at the same time you can tell that there's bad news that needs to be told.

"...I think I'm moving in with dad."


End file.
